How Satan Saves the Soul

It
is actually reported that there is immorality among you, and of a kind that is
not found even among pagans; for a man is living with his father's wife. 2 And
you are arrogant! Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be
removed from among you. 3 For though absent in body I am present in spirit, and
as if present, I have already pronounced judgment 4 in the name of the Lord
Jesus on the man who has done such a thing. When you are assembled, and my
spirit is present, with the power of our Lord Jesus, 5 you are to deliver this
man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved in
the day of the Lord Jesus. 6 Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a
little leaven leavens the whole lump? 7 Cleanse out the old leaven that you may
be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our paschal lamb, has
been sacrificed. 8 Let us, therefore, celebrate the festival, not with the old
leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of
sincerity and truth. 9 I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with
immoral men; 10 not at all meaning the immoral of this world, or the greedy and
robbers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. 11 But
rather I wrote to you not to associate with any one who bears the name of
brother if he is guilty of immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler,
drunkard, or robber -- not even to eat with such a one. 12 For what have I to
do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to
judge? 13 God judges those outside. "Drive out the wicked person from
among you."

If you are not a member of Bethlehem, and did not receive
the mailing concerning the adultery and ongoing unrepentant sin of one of our
members and missionaries, you need to know that this heart-rending situation is
the reason for this sermon this morning. I will save the necessary details for
the following time of prayer and church action. Suffice it to say now that we
are not dealing in the abstract with this text. Our aim is to understand and
obey what it teaches. I enter this next hour with more "fear and trembling"
than, I think, any other morning of my ministry. Not for fear that we are wrong, but for fear
of what God is going to do in judgment.

I urge you with all my heart to turn your attention now to
what the Bible says concerning the presence of impenitent immorality in the
body of Christ.

The Situation in Corinth

The situation in Corinth is that a man is having sexual
relations with his mother or his step mother. Verse 1: "It is actually
reported that there is immorality among you, and immorality of such a kind as
does not exist even among the Gentiles, that someone has his father's
wife." The phrase "his
father's wife" may imply that the woman is not his biological mother. I
may imply that his father is a widower or is divorced, and has remarried. The
father may be alive. Or he may be dead.
Paul does not say that any of these cases would change the sinfulness of what
is happening: the son "has" the father's wife. And Paul calls it
"immorality"—a kind of immorality that even the non-Christian
gentiles condemn.

The immorality was not a one-night stand followed by
broken-hearted repentance (which would have resulted in a very different
response from Paul). The verse says, "Someone HAS (not, "had"—an ongoing present tense) his father's wife." There is no repentance, no
fleeing from this immorality.

In fact, there is not only no repenting; there is brazen
boasting. What verse 2 shows is how the church responded to the immorality in
the church and how it should have responded. Verse 2: "And you have become
arrogant, and have not mourned instead, in order that the one who had done this
deed might be removed from your midst."

Toleration of Sin Is Sinful

I think it should give us great pause—even shock us—that the diagnosis of the problem at Corinth is exactly the opposite from the
diagnosis in many churches today. Today when discipline doesn't happen the
diagnosis is often that we are too humble to discipline a person: Who are we to
point our finger? Who are we to judge? Who are we to cast the first stone? And so a supposed humility is made the basis
of tolerance of impenitent immorality in the church.

On the other hand, today if a church does follow through on
discipline it is often diagnosed as coming straight from pharisaical pride.
Indignation at sin is often portrayed as a cloak for insecurity and a veil over
the Pharisees' own sexual temptations. A kind of "holier-than-thou"
attitude is said to be the basis of the indignation and arrogance is said to be
the basis of the excommunication.

Now that may be true. But does it give you pause and make
you think hard and examine your hearts (it did me) when you read in verse 2
that Paul's diagnosis of the problem at Corinth was exactly the opposite?
There, arrogance was the basis of tolerance, and broken-hearted humility should
have been the basis of excommunication.

He said, "You have become arrogant." People in the
church were actually boasting in this immorality. Now how could that be? What
kind of theology would give rise to boasting in immorality? We have seen it in
Paul's letters elsewhere. It says, "Let us sin that grace may abound"
(Rom. 3:8; 6:1). So it's a theology that misunderstands the power of grace, and
turns it into license. It's a theology that misunderstands freedom and uses it
as "an opportunity for the flesh" (Gal. 5:13), and says (as they
were saying at Corinth) "all things are lawful for me" (1 Cor. 6:12;
10:23). And so they were boasting in their freedom and in the tolerance of
grace. Pride was the basis of sinful toleration not pharisaical judgment.

True Humility Does the Hard Work

And humility, as Paul presented it, was the basis of
excommunication not toleration. ". . . You have not mourned instead, in
order that the one who had done this deed might be removed from your
midst." "Blessed are those who mourn," Jesus said. Blessed are
the meek and broken hearted who know the horror of sin and their own
vulnerabilities and failures and offenses against God. These are the ones, Paul
says, who will remove the impenitent one from the church. True brokenness and
sorrow is the basis of excommunication.

True Biblical brokenness does not say, "I could never
judge a brother like that." True Biblical brokenness believes verses 9-13
and submits to the authority of the apostle.

9 I wrote you in my letter not to
associate with immoral people; 10 I did
not at all mean with the immoral people of this world, or with the covetous and
swindlers, or with idolaters; for then you would have to go out of the
world. 11 But actually, I wrote to you
not to associate with any so-called brother if he should be an immoral person,
or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or a swindler-- not
even to eat with such a one. 12 For what
have I to do with judging outsiders? Do
you not judge those who are within the church?
13 But those who are outside, God judges. Remove the wicked man from
among yourselves.

Biblical brokenness submits to the painful, risky,
time-consuming, often oppressive process of church discipline. It says, "I
will take the log out of my eye that I may see clearly to do whatever
eye-surgery the Bible calls upon me to do." It says, "I will look to
myself lest I too be tempted as I try to follow God's counsel in excluding
another in the hope of reconciliation." Humility does not tell God how to
be gracious. It listens and tries to obey with fear and trembling.

Cleanse Out the Old Leaven

One of our men told me on Friday morning that as he was
praying for Daryl, he simply broke down weeping. He is not the only one. That
is the spirit in which we come this morning: the means of removing someone
from the church is the mourning of humility, not pride. Biblical humility does
not say, "We could never do that." On the contrary Paul says it is
pride that resists putting the immoral man out.

Look at verse 6: "Your boasting (there's the pride) is
not good." Why not? First, because it was rooted in ignorance.
The verse goes on: "Do you not know (there's the ignorance) that a little
leaven leavens the whole lump of dough?" In other words, "In your
supposed knowledge of grace and freedom you are destroying the church."
They would have never dreamed that by boasting in grace and freedom they
were corrupting and destroying the church from the inside out.

So Paul says in verse 7, "Clean out the old leaven,
that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. For Christ our
Passover also has been sacrificed." For a week after the Passover lamb was
sacrificed in Israel the house was supposed to be free from all leaven, all
yeast. Paul takes this as a picture of sin in the church. Christ is now our
Passover Lamb. And our Passover
celebration does not last one week but for a lifetime. The leaven of sin is to
be put out permanently. We never make peace with sin again. We fight it and
confess it and flee it and never boast in its presence.

But the pride at Corinth was saying, "Christ has been
sacrificed for our sins, therefore we can sin and grace will abound." But
Paul said, "Christ our Passover Lamb has been sacrificed, therefore clean
out the old leaven."

When I spoke to Daryl on the phone to plead with him to
repent and return to his wife and his church and his Savior the last text I
used was Titus 2:14, "[Christ] gave Himself for us, that He might . . .
purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good
deeds." In other words Christ died to cleanse the leaven of sin out of our
lives and out of the church. And I said,
"Daryl, to choose impurity week after week, without repentance, is to
choose against the purpose of the cross and to thrust a sword into Jesus' side
with every new act of immorality. He did not just die to pardon your sin, he
died to empower you against sin. And those who do not embrace the power of the
cross to fight their sin will not have the pardon of the cross to forgive their
sin."

The pride of Corinth was that they presumed to cut Christ
asunder. They thought they could have him as one who pardons and reject him
as one who purifies.

To that Paul gives a clear answer in verse 7: No. But
"clean out the old leaven, that you may be" what you really are in
Christ—unleavened and pure. For if you do not act like what you are, you
aren't. The proof of your pardon is your passion for purity.

What then shall they do? And what should we do?

God Can Use Satan to Sanctify

Paul says in verse 2 and 7 and 13 that the man who is guilty
of this impenitent immorality is to be removed from the church: "Remove
the wicked man from among yourselves" (v. 13). But he gives his answer more fully in verses
3-5: "For I, on my part, though absent in body but present in spirit, have
already judged him who has so committed this, as though I were present."
In other words Paul cannot be there in person, but says that he will exert what
influence he can from a distance (perhaps by prayer) to see that the discipline
is effective.

He goes on in verse 4: "In the name of our Lord Jesus,
when you are assembled [which is why we are not doing this in private, but in
the assembly of the church], and I with you in spirit [in other words, you can
count on Paul's approval and the presence of his influence by prayer], with the
power of our Lord Jesus, 5 I have decided [that you ought] to deliver such a
one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, that his spirit may be saved in
the day of the Lord Jesus."

It may be that simply putting a person out of the covenant
community is the same as handing him over to Satan, but I don't think so. When Paul says at the end of verse 4,
"with the power of the Lord Jesus," I think he shows us that
something more is happening—something that takes the power of Jesus to
perform. Paul did it at least one other time that we know about (1 Tim. 1:20):
"I have handed over Hymenaeus and Alexander to Satan so that they may be
taught not to blaspheme."

What seems to be in view is something like what happened in
the book of Job. The only other place in the Bible outside Paul's letters where
"handing someone over to Satan" with these very words occurs is Job
2:6, which says, literally, "And the Lord said to the Devil, 'Behold I hand
him [Job] over to you. Only spare his life.'"

The next verse says, "Satan went out from the presence
of the Lord and smote Job with sore boils from the sole of his foot to the
crown of his head." And the result of God's gracious purpose? Job 42:6-7:
"Now my eye sees you [O Lord] and I despise myself and repent in dust and
ashes."

So Satan became the means under God's sovereign control of
purifying Job's heart and bringing him closer than ever to God. This is not the
only place where God uses Satan to do that. In 2 Corinthians 12 Paul describes
his thorn in the flesh as a messenger of Satan which God appoints for Paul's
humility and Christ's glory. Verse 7:
"To keep me from exalting myself, there was given me a thorn in the flesh,
a messenger of Satan to buffet me—to keep me from exalting myself!"

When Paul prayed that Jesus would take it away, the answer
he got was, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in
weakness." Notice that the one who
is in control of whether the "messenger of Satan" stays or goes is
Christ. This is why it is so significant in our text (v. 4) when Paul says that
handing someone over to Satan is "with the power of the Lord Jesus."
We don't have the power or the authority in ourselves to do this.

I close with what I hope will feel as hopeful to you as it
does to me. Jesus is Satan's ruler. And he uses Satan, our archenemy, to save
and sanctify his people. He brought Job to penitence and prosperity. He brought
Paul to the point where he could exult in tribulation and make the power of
Christ manifest.

And Paul hopes that the result of handing over this man to
Satan will be the salvation of his spirit at the day of Christ. In other words,
Paul's aim—our aim—in handing someone over to Satan is that some striking
misery will come in such a way that the person will say with Job, "My eyes
have seen the Lord, and I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes."

It could be boils. It could be blindness. It could be AIDS.
And it would be as nothing, if it would save Daryl's spirit from hell. May Jesus
come now and help us.

John Piper (@JohnPiper) is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is author of more than 50 books.

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